Reply To: T-shirt designers unite and take over

[Brian H]

Here’s the Economist’s take on the problem. As usual, it contains the obligatory sententious nod in the direction of GW, but has some good info nevertheless. E.g.:

To make water use more efficient, says Koichiro Matsuura, the head of UNESCO, the main UN agency dealing with water, will require fundamental changes of behaviour. That means changing incentives, improving information flows, and improving the way water use is governed. All that will be hard.

Water is rarely priced in ways that reflect supply and demand. Usually, water pricing simply means that city dwellers pay for the cost of the pipes that transport it and the sewerage plants that clean it.

Basic information about who uses how much water is lacking. Rainwater and river flows can be measured with some accuracy. But the amount pumped out of lakes is a matter of guesswork and information on how much is taken from underground aquifers is almost completely lacking.

Water isn’t as free as the air any more! (Can air itself be far behind? 😉 ) Actually, it never was. Everything that takes work to obtain has a cost, in fact. But that’s another topic.